Each year hundreds of Middlebury alumni make a rare trip back to Vermont for Reunion, and New England Review is pleased to present the writers among them in an annual reading with alumni and faculty authors.

This year brings a range of accomplished journalists, poets, essayists, and novelists. Katherine Arden, Cedar Attanasio, Theo Padnos, Christopher Shaw, and Jeneva Burroughs Stone (pictured above) will read from their work on Saturday, June 11, at 1:00 p.m. Axinn Room 229, Middlebury College. Free and open to the public.

Katherine Arden (2011) has lived and studied in France and Russia, and is the author of the forthcoming novel The Bear and the Nightingale, which will be published by Random House in 2017.

Cedar Attanasio (2011.5) is a journalist who has covered the immigration and politics beats for the Latin Times, as well as protests and soccer fandom during the 2014 World Cup in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro for IBT.

Theo Padnos (1991) will read a short bit from a novel he wrote during a recent spell in prison in Syria. The novel is about crime and punishment in an ISIS-like society. He is also the author of My Life Has Stood a Loaded Gun and Undercover Muslim.

Christopher Shaw, who has taught at Middlebury since 2003, is the author of Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip With the Gods (W. W. Norton, 2000) and a former editor of Adirondack Life magazine. His writing has appeared in the New England Review, the New York Times, and many other periodicals.

Jeneva Burroughs Stone (1986) has published poetry and hybrid essays in Beloit Poetry Journal, Pleiades, Poetry International, Colorado Review, and other magazines, and her collection of linked essays and poems, Monster, is forthcoming from Phoenicia Publishing this fall.

Julia Alvarez (Weybridge) has been practicing the craft of writing for over forty years. She has brought a variety of work to readers of all ages, including novels, picture books, novels for middle readers and young adults, collections of poetry, and nonfiction—most recently A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship. She has taught English and creative writing at every level, from elementary schools to senior citizen centers. She is currently a writer in residence at Middlebury College.

John Elder (Bristol)taught English and environmental studies at Middlebury College from 1973 until his retirement in 2010. His books Reading the Mountains of Home, The Frog Run, and Pilgrimage toVallombrosa explore the meaning of Vermont’s landscape and environmental history for him as a teacher, writer, and householder. Recently he has also completed a memoir called Picking up the Flute that chronicles his obsession since retirement with learning about and playing traditional Irish music.

Jessica Hendry Nelson (Colchester) is the author of the forthcoming memoir in essays, If Only You People Could Follow Directions (Counterpoint, 2014). Her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, PANK, Carolina Quarterly, Best American Essays 2012, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Johnson State College. She is also the managing editor and nonfiction editor of Green Mountains Review and the cofounder of the Renegade Writers’ Collective in Burlington.

Christopher Shaw (Bristol) is the author of Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods and a former editor of Adirondack Life. He teaches creative writing at Middlebury College and codirects the Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism. His essay “At Panther Gorge with William James” appeared recently in NER.

Confluences

After collaborating on the autobiographies of some of the world’s most famous subjects, Peter Knobler turns towards home and writes about memory, music, and his mother. “When I was growing up we had spent many Sunday mornings in our Greenwich Village home listening to Mahalia Jackson, Harry Belafonte, the Weavers—records that now sat on her shelves like tablets.”